The
Giant Mine remediation approval process is a rare example of
the federal government having to seek an environmental assessment
approval in order to remediate harm that it already caused. This
put the government, more used to the role of regulator, in the role
of proponent. In that role, government lawyer Kenneth Landa
experienced the stresses and dissonance of trying to fit the environmental assessment hearing process to a
set of complex problems it was never designed for. This illustrates
one of many ways that current environmental assessment processes
for major projects raise public expectations that they cannot
meet.
For example: Unlike most projects that go through environmental
assessment, everyone did agree that the heavily contaminated and
highly dangerous mine site does require remediation. But is the EA
hearing panel or the federal Treasury Board to decide how much federal
taxpayer money is to be spent on the project? Who gets to decide
the public
